Offices & Commercial
Design of commercial office buildings contributes 20% of our
turnover in the Property sector. We work with property developers
creating space to be let on the open office rental market,
corporate clients developing space for their own occupation and
with institutional property investment funds. Our activity in this
sub-sector is very much concentrated in the central London market,
with a portfolio of prestigious projects in the City and the West
End.
Current trends in the office market include a tendency towards
mixed-use schemes and ever longer spanning floor plates. Many of
the office developments we work on include elements of residential
and retail use. Planning conditions in Westminster in particular
generally result in some residential apartments being required in
addition to the principal use of the land for provision of office
space. This is driven by a long-term planning strategy to increase
the numbers of people living within central London in order to
relieve the strain on the transport infrastructure. Also, internal
columns seem to be becoming a thing of the past as we now
frequently design floor plates with spans of 18m. This benefits our
clients by increasing the flexibility of space planning and
maximising lettable area and hence rental returns.
A further development is the emergence of sustainability as a
design parameter in all buildings rather than in special ‘one-off’
projects. While this has been largely Government-legislation led,
clients in the sub-sector are starting to attach market value to
buildings with greater environmental features. This is having the
effect of raising the consideration of sustainability in design
from mere minimum legal provision required to a higher status as
enhanced value is beginning to be attributed to more sustainable
projects.
We have longstanding relationships with a broad range of
stakeholders in the commercial office markets we work in. We have
formed strong bonds with developers, architects, institutional
property investment funds, project managers, property agents,
planners and freeholders such as The Crown Estate.
We focus our delivery on the needs of the client recognising
that the aims and objectives of every project are different. We
listen to our clients’ needs and tailor our service to what is
actually required rather than produce a standard set of repeated
deliverables. We evaluate all available options for feasibility and
efficiency in any given situation to ensure the solutions we
deliver are already optimised to maximise benefit to the
client.
As a consulting business our value is contained in the talent
and knowledge of our staff. We recruit both at graduate level from
leading universities and at chartered engineer level with to
maintain a varied knowledge and skills base that is broad and deep.
We encourage our staff to keep abreast of developments both
technical and commercial to ensure we are leaders in the
sub-sector. The value of this knowledge is fed back to our clients
in the quality of the service we provide.
CONTACT: Paul Bowkett, property@scottwilson.com
Holborn Viaduct, London
Project Introduction
Client: Castlemore Securities
Value: £42m
Completion: 2008
